WRC Offers Lidar and Ortho Viewer

Details

Have you heard about all this new lidar data and wondered what it is and how to view it? WRC has created an on-line viewer that lets anyone explore not just lidar data, but also orthophotos (air photos) and USGS topographic maps.

What is lidar? It’s a technology allows us to create a high-resolution picture of the Earth’s surface; stone walls, old roads, historic river channels, and many other features become visible. Technically, this viewer doesn’t show you the actual lidar data, but one derivative product—a hillshade. It’s like a gray-scale image of the Earth if vegetation and buildings were stripped away. Other derivative products could include contours, slope, and aspect.